


long may he reign

by tokyometropolis (mesohorany)



Category: WTFock | Skam (Belgium)
Genre: All that good good y'all know, Bleached Blonde!Sander cause I'm never giving that up, Dirty Talk, Half PWP Half Fluff, M/M, Oral, Part Two is gonna bring that E rating woo, Riding, birthday!fic, quarantine fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-09
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:29:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26380438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mesohorany/pseuds/tokyometropolis
Summary: It's Sander's birthday and Robbe's just trying to treat him like the king he is. That may or may not include breaking quarantine for proper celebrations. Set during wtFockdown because I've literally been writing it since then and procrastinating is my vice.
Relationships: Sander Driesen/Robbe IJzermans
Comments: 15
Kudos: 160





	long may he reign

**Author's Note:**

> So basically, y'all, I've LITERALLY had this in my notes since Sander's birthday in fucking APRIL and somehow I (still) haven't finished it, so I'm posting the first part in the hopes that you guys will yell at me until I get it done. I'M BEGGING FOR HELP HERE.

It starts like this, a few days before:

_what do you want for your birthday?_

_To see you_ , Sander texts back immediately. _Really see you, not through a screen. Be with you._

_And if you could be with me? What then?_

When Robbe implies anything in the neighborhood of sexual, even if it’s just something small and coquettish like this, Sander’s heartbeat starts malfunctioning; lovely, innocent Robbe with his easy blush and ducked-away face has been slow to adapt to the more arduous side of their new strange digital relationship so any advance at all is welcome. He likes things in the dark, doesn’t like to see himself at work, how black his eyes go when he’s at the apex of his hunger, and Sander knows how lucky he is that Robbe has been willing to try new things with him at all. With a screen delimiting everything that makes them, _them —_ the fervent puff of Sander’s breath as he chants _I love you, I love you, you’re perfect_ into the flushed shell of Robbe’s ear, the ferocity with which Robbe clings to Sander’s jacket sleeves each time they have to say goodbye — they are pushed, tested, desperate, and Sander wishes he could explain to Robbe that when he says _I need to touch you all over_ he doesn’t just mean _I need to get off_ _with you._ He means: _I love you, I need to feel how you respond to me to know for sure that you love me back. I need to see your face go pink and your eyes turn soft when I kiss your cheek and tell you how wonderful you are. I need to feel you burrowing into my shoulder as we fall asleep and feel your mouth against my throat when you whisper_ I love you _._

Sander has never known how to say things like that out loud. He knows how to draw his thoughts on paper, or brick, or the perfect smoothness of Robbe’s back; he knows how to kiss his feelings into Robbe’s skin, speak it in the tenderness of his fingertips as he plays with the auburn whorls of Robbe’s hair. He thinks by now Robbe understands, but his mind will never allow him the kind of certainty he needs to erase every scrap of misgiving. Being away from Robbe has gotten more difficult with every passing day and too often the memory of holding him feels like a dream, some too-real mirage that Sander hallucinated to stop himself from going mad in isolation.

He cries a lot, more than he lets on to Robbe, or even his mother. Some days he feels comprised entirely of lust and melancholy, half each, no Libra scale to balance him between. They said minute by minute but he misses Robbe like sun in the dead cold of January and it’s starting to feel like time, always so rigid, is truly the construct cynics proclaim it to be. What is time when there is no concrete occurrence to which he can cling, no sure countdown that will bring him with certainty into Robbe’s arms?

The video calls help, they do. But Sander can only pretend that his own hands are Robbe’s, that the wet heat of his own mouth suckling at his finger actually belongs to Robbe, for so long before the perfect farce turns his inner heat volcanic.

Now he answers, because it’s true and he’s getting worse at checking his melancholy, it’s as big as his loud massive soul:

_Anything. I just want to see you. I miss you so much._

When Robbe Facetimes him he isn’t quick enough to hide the tears in his eyes and Robbe catches it, sits up in bed, fear and worry scrambling all over his pretty foxlike face.

“Baby,” he says, voice low and raw with concern despite being several octaves above his customary nighttime whisper, “Sander. Hey. It’s okay. I’m here.”

“You’re not, though,” says Sander, and he wants to cry but he can’t, not now, not when Robbe is trying to cheer him by being sultry about the birthday sex they can’t have. “You’re there. And it’s fucking awful.”

“I know,” says Robbe, and when he reaches instinctively for the screen Sander is stricken by the naked pain in his gold-specked eyes. Robbe is by far the more stoic of the two; Sander had a difficult time reading him at first, until he came to know the minuscule nuances of Robbe’s expressions. “I know. I don’t want to wait. I need to see you, this isn’t fucking fair.”

“Robbe, I just want to _hold you_ ,” says Sander, and the vehemence in his voice is as raw as he’ll allow himself to go. “Just for five minutes, even if that’s all we get to do, I don’t care.”

Robbe tilts his head, smirks knowingly. “Even if that’s all we get to do? Yeah. Right. Sander.”

Sander snorts; Robbe’s right and they both know it. At this point Sander would probably still be crying while he tore Robbe’s clothes off and slammed him up against the wall, but he needs to be as close to Robbe as physically possible to be satisfied after so long away and every nerve ending within him is screaming for it. He mutters,

“Fuck off.”

And Robbe says brightly,

“No,” teasing now, grinning for the reluctant acknowledgment in Sander’s expression. “And I won’t _let_ that be all we do, five minutes is plenty of time, I’m going to come in three seconds. Fuck, Sander, do you know how many times I’ve dreamed about us? Especially since — you know, since last week — “

“I thought it was me doing all the dreaming,” says Sander, one eyebrow curling sharply up, interested now. This has been his quarantine experience in a nutshell: grim hollow sadness followed, often without warning, by unbearable horniness.

“Yeah, well,” says Robbe. Even in the dark Sander can see how the silken cream of his cheeks is flourishing rose red. “I don’t always tell you everything I dream, you know.”

“ _Robin_.” Sander is aghast. “How dare you keep such valuable information from me. I might have to punish you when I’m allowed to see you again.”

“Fucking dare you,” says Robbe, grinning. “Punishing me means punishing yourself. If you make me wait, you’ll have to wait, and you can’t.”

Sander doesn’t even try to dispute that statement. When he speaks it’s a growl. “No. I can’t.”

Robbe’s eyes take on that darkness that Sander so loves.

“Then don’t. What do you want for your birthday, Sander?”

When Robbe says his name, even when they’re so far apart, Sander knows with as much certainty as his chaotic brain allows that his boyfriend loves him: he can hear it in the soft adoration that shapes the sound across Robbe’s tongue. He sighs, continuously denied, crumbling.

“You. I want all of you, Robbe, not just your face in moving pixels. I wanna taste you and smell you and feel you.”

Robbe bites his lip.

“Do you think they’ll really lift the ban when they say? First week of May?”

“I don’t know. It feels like too much to hope for,” says Sander. Before Robbe called he’d been laying at the end of his bed trying to read, pen in hand as it always is so he can delineate in ink the passages that demand to be appreciated, and he transfers it to his mouth as he flips onto his back. Robbe watches how his tongue curls around the cap of the pen and sighs.

“I’m tired of waiting. I want your mouth.”

Sander’s stomach wrings itself out, sudden plunge of desire. “Where?”

“Everywhere,” says Robbe. “The back of my neck.”

He means _while you fuck me from behind_ and Sander’s already hard, groaning as he remembers what it feels like, Robbe fucking back against him as Sander curls a forearm around his lissome hips, leverage. “You always get chills when I do that.”

“Wonder why,” says Robbe, and they grin at each other.

Sander says, with one lazy hand rubbing indecisively over his lower stomach, “Are you gonna bake me a cake?”

“Chocolate with chocolate frosting,” says Robbe. “I’ll leave it on your doorstep but keep one piece for myself at home so we can eat some together.”

“I’d rather eat you,” says Sander innocently, and Robbe chokes on an inhale.

“ _Sander_.”

“Yes?” Sander loves wrongfooting him; he finds the purest joy within Robbe’s adorable pleased abashment. “You’ve let me watch while you made yourself come for me, Robin, don’t go getting all shy on me now.”

“Speaking of that,” says Robbe, coy, and Sander’s ears prick up. “How hard are you?”

With a shudder Sander palms himself through the glossy fabric of his shorts; he loves that Robbe doesn’t feel the need to ask _are you hard_ because he already knows the answer. “Very.”

Robbe gets up on his haunches.

“Show me.”

After that, at least for a while, Sander quite forgets to be sad.

****

The next day, Robbe asks him again: _what do you want for your birthday?_

_Is this like a birthday advent calendar or something?_ Sander’s grinning; he knows Robbe wants a specific response to this question he keeps repeating, but he doesn’t quite understand which one yet. _A new present every day?_

_Something like that. If you could have anything. What?_

Sander thinks about it _,_ but his answer has not changed. _You. All over me._

(Robbe last night with his cheeks hollowed around his own fore- and index fingers, deviant eyes locked to Sander’s through the screen while he slurps around them, showboating for Sander’s oral kink. The thrill of seeing Robbe so brazen for him has Sander gasping with his lips parted, shaking, harshly restricting the needy motion of his wrist so he doesn’t come all down his fingers within three minutes of watching Robbe paw at himself through his shorts, sultry as he deepthroats his fingers.)

_Sander_

_the next time I see you_

_I’ll be on my knees for you_

Sander reads the messages while he’s curled up on the opposite end of the couch to his mother, sketching idly to busy his hands while they watch a bland thriller on TV. He’s so shocked he fucks up the shading he’s working on, swears under his breath.

“Sander,” says his mother, looking up in concern, “are you all right, honey?”

“I’m fine,” lies Sander. “Sorry. I messed up my sketch.”

“You’ll fix it,” she says, smiling. “You always do.”

Sander smiles convincingly back at her, draws his knees up to his chest, and his hands are still quivering when he texts Robbe back.

_Warn a guy, Ijzermans_

_you’re messing with my creative flow 😍🥵_

Robbe’s quick and Sander can taste his verve.

_Warn you for what? You never warn me😎_

_Is that part of my birthday present? You on your knees for me?_

_maybe😇_

And that’s all he’ll say on the subject. Meanwhile Sander is left squirming endlessly on the couch thinking of Robbe gazing up at him with those doe eyes before he swallows around Sander’s cock and his concentration is ruined.

_****_

On Sunday evening, the night before his nineteenth birthday, he has an answer ready when Robbe asks.

_If i could have anything, I’d want you to come here. And come inside with your birthday cake so we can eat some together, for real. And then let me come inside you._

There’s a pause while Robbe types and when Sander reads his response his heart ASCENDS.

_There we go._

Despite the miniature cardiac event Sander doesn’t dare let himself hope. The disappointment would ravage him if he spends the day thinking that Robbe will break the rules only for him not to follow through on all his strange vague hinting. At any rate, Sander consoles himself, he will at least have a moment of standing by his front door, watching through the decorative glass panel as on the other side Robbe places his cake on the porch and then places his hand on the pane and they do what they’ve been doing: make the most of what they’ve got.

_****_

Robbe wakes up early, spends an hour in the kitchen baking the most perfect, luscious dark chocolate cake he can manage with his limited culinary skills. So he won’t argue himself out of it he pretends he’s not going to do what he’s going to do, pretends he can still change his mind, when the truth is he made his decision the second he saw Sander fighting to veil his tears from him just four days ago.

Robbe knows Sander is struggling enormously and trying to hide it; though he understands why his wonderful, openhearted, _complicated_ boyfriend isn’t revealing the full extent of his gloom, he wishes Sander would be honest about how he’s doing. Robbe is going to worry about Sander regardless of how joyous or downtrodden or in-between he is, because Robbe loves Sander more than anything else in this entire world, and he would say or do anything to make him feel secure and whole.

Often, he has no idea what he can do to help. Today, he knows exactly what Sander needs, and he intends to take full advantage of that knowledge.

As he searches through their photos for an appropriate birthday post he thinks of what he’d do if the whole country wasn’t under lockdown, how he’d treat Sander like royalty, where they’d go for his day, maybe to the beach or on a scavenger hunt for street art and vintage record stores. Thinks of Sander at the beach house staring into the camera with that overdone confidence in his heavy eyes: _i will be king, and you_. He hadn’t known what the caption meant at first, but now he understands, and it’s what drives him to make his own little reference to monarchy.

_My king._

He knows Sander will go crazy for it. He isn’t wrong. An hour later, as he’s slathering the final layer of icing on his sweet masterpiece, he gets two screenshots in a row: first, that tiny section of the lyrics to _Heroes_ ; second, the entirety of Robbe’s Instagram caption. And, immediately afterward:

_Robin...🥰❤️_

Robbe texts back: _  
_

_I love you. Happy birthday, king. When this shit is over I’ll give you a crown._

And then he texts the Broerrs and calls Milan.

****

Sander’s reaction to the impromptu birthday Zoom is worth all the planning, that unfettered grin that dominates the whole of his perfect face, how his eyes go light and buoyant with happiness. _Best birthday ever,_ he says with enthusiasm, and Robbe hopes he’s lying because that must mean he’s never had even an _okay_ birthday before. He wants to tell Sander the truth, tell him he has no idea yet exactly how good this birthday will turn out to be, but he keeps his mouth shut for the sake of surprise. Waits until late twilight is settling over the sky and his mother thinks him shut into his room for the evening before he climbs out his window and straddles his bike, Then, cake in tow, he takes off down the street in the direction of Sander’s house.

As he’s pedaling through the eerie placid ghost town that is modern-day Antwerp, nerves and anticipation at war in his stomach, his phone vibrates against the side of his thigh; he knows it’s Sander, probably asking what time Robbe plans to drop his cake off. Robbe is all too aware that the wiser move would have been to delay his mission until much later, when their chances of getting thwarted by Sander’s mother would likely diminish enormously due to the quiet hour, but he’s months overdue to touch Sander’s face and he can’t hold out a second longer. It takes him maybe fifteen minutes to reach his destination; his awareness of every second causes time to stretch into what feels like fifteen years. When he pulls up to Sander’s curb he dismounts his bike, body humming with delicious excitement, and he draws on every bit of internal restraint to stop from bounding like an overeager hare up Sander’s porch steps and start hammering on the door. Instead, caging himself, he pulls his bike stealthily around the side of the house, where he knows he can conceal his method of transport under the kitchen window, and having put it to temporary rest he treads on tiptoe around the back of Sander’s house to the screened-in porch.

It’s dark, vacant: perfect. He takes his phone out and sure enough Sander has requested an estimated time of arrival.

_I can’t wait to see you even if it’s just through the glass. hurryyyy ❤️_

Robbe’s thumb is trembling as he replies. _  
_

_I’m here._

Less than ten seconds later Sander answers.

_I don’t see you?!_

Robbe grins. They’d had it all planned out: he’d send a text announcing his arrival, set the cake down on Sander’s front porch, stand before the glass and wait for Sander to come. Then they’d play pretend, that not being able to hold each other on Sander’s birthday was normal, that this was fine and well and neither of them would be crying when Robbe turned to go. He is so, so glad they don’t have to do that. _  
_

_Wrong door._

Three seconds pass, five. Robbe shoves his phone in his sweatshirt pocket and waits, praying to whatever entity will lend him an ear that Sander will know to be silent, and something must have heard him because the click of the back door when it opens is barely audible. Sander doesn’t touch the light switch but in the muted watercolor blues and grays of dusk Robbe can see him all lit up like a luminescent star, skin snow-pale against the sharp silvery blonde of his puffy hair, the look on his face nothing but raw, raw, raw. For a second he simply stands against the doorframe and then he breaks into a gigantic smile, larger even than the uncontrollable grins he shows in those first few seconds of their FaceTime calls, and Robbe’s heart _crashes_.

“Hey,” he chokes out, tongue heavy, and Sander’s eyes are too bright.

“Hey.”

“Happy birthday,” whispers Robbe, proffering the little baking tin in which he’d placed Sander’s cake. Neither boy has blinked once, too deprived of the sight of one another to waste even a millisecond of time unseeing. “Chocolate with extra chocolate.”

“Robbe,” croaks Sander, and Robbe is shocked to feel his eyes growing wet and hot with mixed-emotion tears: how he has _ached_ for Sander, pined listlessly for him until all hours of the morning, and here he is, real, inhuman spectral beauty in the chill April night.

Sander sees how Robbe’s pupils shine and that’s all it takes for honest tears to spill down his cheeks; Robbe is close, too close, and it’s been so so _so_ fucking long since he was more than pixels and glitches and Sander had forgotten how differently his own heart beats when Robbe is near. Robbe is small, magnificent: his lower lip is trembling but the joy in his overflowing eyes is palpable and Sander means to laugh but it comes out half a sob.

“I was wondering,” says Robbe, taking a tentative step forward as he swipes a sleeve aggressively over his eyes, soothing the urge in his core to go to Sander and comfort him. “If you’d changed your mind. About what you want for your birthday.” _  
_

_“_ Wh — no,” says Sander, confused. “Not at all.”

“Good,” says Robbe as he grins through his tears. “Because I want to give you your birthday present. For real.”

Sander does not dare to believe him, not yet; Robbe has been so firm about sticking to the rules Sander wasn’t fully convinced he’d venture out to drop the cake on Sander’s doorstep. He’s leaning on the screen door so hard it’s creaking in protest against his weight. “You mean like — “

“Yes,” says Robbe, rough. “Sander, I can’t wait. I don’t care anymore.“

Like he’s out of his body, mirage-haze, Sander unlatches the screen door, eyes pinned unmoving to Robbe’s own, half afraid he’ll run. Mechanically he reaches out to take the cake from Robbe’s hands, places it with the utmost care on the wooden floor at his feet. Then he takes the two steps down to ground to meet Robbe where he stands.

“You’re serious.”

Robbe doesn’t speak, just throws himself forward and frames Sander’s face in his wind-chilled hands and kisses him so ferociously Sander forgets how to think. By force of habit his arms encircle Robbe’s shoulders and he’s crying in earnest now, sobbing for joy and disbelief and _relief_ , how unbelievable Robbe feels against his chest, how safe and sweet and secure. Sander’s been confined to his house for months now but it’s only been since Robbe that he’s discovered what it feels like to have a home.

Robbe’s crying too, unashamedly, his fingers braiding in the cloud-white of Sander’s hair, kissing him over and over, the elation in his chest so massive it’s exploding from him. “I love you,” he grits out with his mouth still mashed fiercely against Sander’s, “I love you, I love you,” and Sander is saying it back and there is nothing to top this, not ever. For days Robbe has dreamt in vivid streaks of color how it might feel to hold Sander to his chest again but fantasy can not touch reality, not when it’s this, not when it’s them. Not when they’re as perfect as they can be for each other.

“I missed you so much,” chokes Sander, his nose rubbing against Robbe’s own, vehement. “I missed you so much, I thought this fucking shit would never end, I — “

“I know,” says Robbe, and just the soothing sound of his voice hushes the leftover angst in Sander’s throat. “I know, I know, Sander, I’m here. I love you.”

“I love you,” says Sander, and he can never say it enough. He bends his knees, gets his arms around Robbe’s hips, lifts him up and spins him around and kisses his lips his nose his chin. The surprised squeak of delight that escapes from Robbe’s throat is the most beautiful sound Sander has ever heard.

Robbe says,

“Is your mum awake?”

And Sander replies, grinning insolently,

“We both know how to be quiet.”

He wants to carry Robbe to his bedroom but the double weight of them pressed heavy onto one portion of floor will give them away; instead he kisses him until his feet touch the ground again and when Robbe gives a pouty whimper, discontent to be set down, Sander smiles and ghosts his nose like a birdwing flutter over the tip of Robbe’s own.

“You want me to carry you to bed, huh.”

“Oh is that where we’re going?” Robbe’s eyes are all jest. “I thought we we’d go eat cake in your kitchen.”

“You did, did you.” Sander is smirking, doesn’t bother to quirk the end of his sentence into a query. “Maybe share a piece with my mum, let her know you’re here?”

“Definitely,” says Robbe, eyes half closed, pressing a slow kiss into Sander’s wet bottom lip. Sander kisses back, lazy, enjoying that sweet familiar taste he’s been deprived of for too long before he hooks two fingers down into the waistband of Robbe’s jean’s and yanks him roughly in.

“Or maybe,” he says, voice so deep it’s almost more a vibration than a sound, “we don’t.”

Robbe’s breath goes choppy for the intrusive explosion of _want_ in his stomach. Around them the evening sighs, settles, indigo night encroaching.

“I have some other things in mind.”

Sander knows the tone of his voice, has it memorized like the exact combination of gold and green and light chocolate required to describe in color the way Robbe’s eyes shine at twilight. “Yeah?”

Devilish, Robbe hums. “Mmhmm.” He opens Sander’s mouth with his tongue, licks under his top lip, grazes his teeth over skin. “Tell me more about carrying me to bed.”

“I’d rather show you,” says Sander, strained, and Robbe grabs the cake and grabs his hand and tugs him towards the porch.

“Let’s go then.”

It’s no easy task but they manage to steal into the house, down the dark hallway, up the flight of stairs to Sander’s bedroom without releasing so much as a snort of laughter. If Sander’s mum is still awake Robbe doesn’t hear a sound from her and as they shut themselves into Sander’s comfortable lightstring-lit room (soft white in contrast to Robbe’s loud colors) he has to grin for the ease of the whole operation. His worry about being discovered has been quite unfounded.

“God, your room,” he says, as Sander bolts the door. “It’s so good to be back.”

“My room is very happy to have you back,” says Sander, enveloping him from behind, both of his huge hands sliding under the hem of Robbe’s sweatshirt as he pulls him back flush against his front. “It’s missed you very much.”

“Your poor room,” says Robbe, smiling, eyes falling shut in luxuriant pleasure. He hasn’t felt this kind of happiness, this utter _delirium,_ since the last time Sander held him like this. Together they are euphoria, always, and there’s nothing like it. “Has it been dreaming about me?”

Sander catches Robbe’s earring in his teeth, nips cautiously at his skin, one palm splayed flat across Robbe’s low abdomen as the other slides up to coil through the cold chain of Robbe’s necklace. Habitually they’re swaying together, so familiar with the other’s movements, settling back into rhythm after so long apart. “You know it has. Every night.”

Reaching back, Robbe scrubs his fingers up the nape of Sander’s neck to knot through his shock of hair, long soft cornsilk against Robbe’s skin. “I’ve been dreaming about what we used to _do_ in this room.”

The sound in Sander’s chest is savage, animalistic; his hands are mapping now, reacquainting himself with the canyons and valleys and ridge-lines of Robbe’s intricacies. How his skin blooms into involuntary chills when Sander pinches gently at his nipples, how his entire body shudders for the breath Sander puffs warm onto his neck. He’s receptive and _wanting_ and Sander needs him wide open and unclothed on the bed so he can kiss him _everywhere_.

“Imagine what it’s like for me,” he breathes into the canal of Robbe’s ear. “Stuck here every night without you, thinking about that. It’s so empty when you aren’t here, Robbe, fuck.”

“My room is as well,” says Robbe, and he swivels his head so they can kiss, deep and slick and so heavy he has to fall back into Sander’s chest for support. “I sleep like shit when you’re not next to me now.”

“Me too,” says Sander. He could cry again, won’t let himself. “It’s not — it doesn’t feel like home without you.”

“You _are_ my home,” blurts Robbe, and Sander goes still.

“I’m your —?”

“Yeah,” says Robbe fiercely, because he knows how Sander’s instantaneous instinct is to refute and doubt and brush things off. He is made of such gargantuan emotion, always pouring his love into ink and paint and larger-than-life murals, that when he is done there is no tenderness left for himself. No matter how cleverly Sander tries to conceal his emotion Robbe knows he still thinks of himself as toxic, unlovable, and Robbe isn’t going to stop trying to show him otherwise until the day that he dies. “I feel safest with you. Happiest with you. That’s home.”

Sander studies his face, unnameable emotion swelling over the disbelief in his eyes, and he wants to dispute it (because _who could ever find safety in your ashes_ , his brain spits smugly at him) but by now he knows Robbe well enough to understand that he is being nothing but honest.

“You,” he says, voice thick as he struggles to master himself. “You think I’m your home?”

“Sander,” says Robbe gently, and he spins so they’re face-to-face, so he can cradle Sander’s jaw in the warm tenderness of his palms, “I know you are. Happy birthday, baby. I’m so glad I can spend a little bit of it with you.”

Sander exhales, quiet whoosh as he takes Robbe’s words in, and for once in his life he goes to war against his mind’s unreasonable urge to negate every kind thing that Robbe has ever said to him. Underneath everything he knows that Robbe loves him, every bit as much as Sander himself adores Robbe, and today he can silence the incessant onslaught of self doubt and let himself enjoy this. When he swallows, closes his eyes, falls in to nudge his forehead against Robbe’s own, he can feel how Robbe smiles.

“I love you, Robin,” he whispers, and Robbe kisses him like he’s the most precious thing, like he’s _cherished_. He makes Sander believe things that no one else ever has ever had the power to convince him of.

“I love you too,” says Robbe with feeling, and he groans, chuckles. “We’re fucking gross.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. This is just a continuation of the story I told you all about on my lockdown walks,” says Sander, grinning as he shrugs. “Those two young men are disgustingly in love, you know. Everyone in the world is envious.”

“Yeah, well, everyone in the world should be envious of me,” says Robbe, unzipping Sander’s hoodie so he can wrap his arms more snugly around Sander’s torso, get as close as he can. “I’m dating the most beautiful man alive.”

“No, you mixed up the story,” says Sander fondly, planting feathery kisses on the rose-pink apples of Robbe’s cheeks, his nose. “It’s the other way around.”

“Wrong,” says Robbe, stubbornly. “Definitely wrong. And you forgot to talk about a very important detail in this story of yours.”

“Oh yeah, and what’s that?”

“Not only am I dating the most beautiful man alive,” says Robbe, and he kisses Sander openly on the mouth. “He also happens to be a king.”

Sander tips his head back, breathes out a little laugh.

“You took that picture of me. The one that I captioned with _Heroes_ , do you remember?”

“I do.” Robbe thrills for the reference, that Sander enjoyed his little nod to the first week they’d ever had together.

“Did you know what I meant?”

“Not at first,” says Robbe. “I noticed when I was studying for that Bowie exam. But you were looking at me when I took the picture, so I think I kind of understood.”

“I hoped you did,” says Sander softly, nuzzling him. “I was really loud about wanting you. I couldn’t help it.”

Robbe laughs, deep. “I loved it. No one has ever been like that with me, not ever. And now look at me, the boyfriend of royalty, and both of us in your palace after being kept apart for so long by that —what was it you said? — _merciless virus._ ”

He rocks forward, licks a warm tingling stripe up the side of Sander’s throat. From his core, from the base of his spine, Sander quivers.

“My palace, huh. A lot less grand than what I’ve always thought a palace would be.”

“Use your imagination,” says Robbe, blowing in his ear, dark chuckling for the infinite shudder that reverberates like a crash of sound through Sander’s body. “I know better than anyone the things you’re capable of dreaming.”

He takes one of Sander’s hands, opens it wide, strokes Sander’s index finger over his own lower lip. Draws it into his mouth with his eyes locked to Sander’s own, all the way in until he’s bobbing at the third knuckle. Sander’s intake of breath is hitching and harsh.

“Robbe, Jesus.”

Robbe pulls off enough so he can speak. His eyes are gold-glint, starlight, sin.

“Are you happy?”

“Happy?” Sander moves like a cobra strike, lifting Robbe easily into his arms, serotonin cascading through his body like that first dose of healing summer sun after infinite winter. “You have no idea. I haven’t felt like this in months.”

“Me either. Not since I saw you last,” says Robbe on a vehement whisper, cupping Sander’s face in his hands as he mashes their foreheads noses lips together, domino effect. “I wanna be closer to you. Let me.”

Like a big cat Sander _rrrrr_ s in the back of his throat, involuntary. “How close.”

“You know how close,” hisses Robbe, clenching his thighs around Sander’s hips, vine-wrapped. It amazes Sander how strong Robbe is, how he can support himself solely at the core, but when he hops down and grabs Sander by the shoulders and marches him roughly back against the wall to pin him in place Sander’s amazement multiplies into shock.

“ _Do_ I.”

When Robbe grins it is scythe-sharp, wicked, shameless.

“Told you already,” he says, calm, starving eyes on Sander’s swollen lower lip. “You’re my king, so I’m gonna treat you like one.”

“And how do you propose to do that?”

Robbe presses his hips forward hard into Sander's own.

“Oh, I have some ideas,” he murmurs, and Sander's body goes tingly all over. “But right now I think I'll get on my knees for you.”

**Author's Note:**

> Part deux: ALL THE PWP, when I finally sit down and properly write it out. Sweet Jesus I need five hundred more hours in a day.


End file.
